"With a skillful use of carefully researched detail, Warner relates the transformation from a handicraft to a factory system of production to the pervasive quest for private gain, and shows how that basic objective restricted the city's response to such community needs as education, health, and welfare. . . . His book is packed with suggestive historical detail."—American Historical Review

"[This book] serves, in a way which no other city biography can claim to, as the historical analogy of urban America."—Urban Studies

"A splendidly economical and enlightening piece of urban history. . . . Contributes more than an important remedial lesson in the cultural foundation of the urban crisis."—American Institute of Planners Journal

This award-winning book charts the unfolding, from the Revolutionary War to the Great Depression, of the American tradition of city building and city living, using Philadelphia as a resonant example.